Dan Naumovich: Hey! Get down from there!

Tuesday

Apr 22, 2014 at 4:10 PMApr 24, 2014 at 5:36 PM

When we last met, I expressed the intention of seeking out new and strange experiences for the purpose of having something to write about each month. If you’ll recall, at no point did I mention the terms “terrifying” or “death-defying” to describe the types of situations in which I would place myself.

Yet, that was exactly what one reader suggested.

Allow me to digress.

As a child, I enjoyed climbing trees, making my way up to thinnest of branches to be afforded the widest view of the Indian Hills subdivision. This hobby continued through my college years when I’d sometimes seek a bird’s eye view of campus when in a contemplative mood.

With age, however, comes wisdom and I eventually learned that heights can lead to falls and should thus rightly be respected. Over time, this developed into a low-grade fear. Although I went on to work on a handful of re-shingling projects, I did so with the sweatiest of palms and avoided the roof’s edge as much as possible.

So when Mike O’Shea of Harold O’Shea Builders invited me to take a tour of the tower crane used for constructing tall buildings, my first reaction was to deny any knowledge of the invitation or the existence of Mike O’Shea. But then a strange sense of daring came over me and I mentally entered into the early stages of mulling over the possibility of perhaps maybe going up in the crane.

It hardly seemed fair, though. While Dave Barry got to drink fine wine with the upper crust, I was to dangle high up over a construction zone like an apprenticing Walenda.

I took to the Internet to research these tower cranes and in doing so confirmed the rationality behind acrophobia. I’ve played with enough Legos in my day to know that towers built that tall are structurally unstable and given to toppling with only the slightest provocation. And even though I would be enclosed in the crane’s cab, the sensation of floating untethered would certainly be palpable.

Mike who?

Fortunately, in the days that followed, fate smiled upon me and the plan was eventually nixed due to liability concerns, saving me from a certain plummeting and my heirs a handsome settlement.

But the brief prospect aroused my curiosity in tower cranes, so I talked with Mike Heitz, one of the men responsible for operating it. Several of the things he shared made me thankful to live in a litigious society that prevents newspaper columnists from doing anything stupid.

First off, getting to the crane’s cab requires a three- to five-minute climb up the tower’s 158-foot ladder, which is hardly the self-contained and carpeted elevator I’m accustomed to when rising several stories.

Second, 158 feet!

And finally, when I inquired about bathroom breaks, he responded, “That’s all done up here in the cab.” I pressed no further for details.

Of course in the hands of well-trained professionals — Heitz apprenticed with the Operating Engineers Local 965, has been a crane operator for six years and is acrophobia-free — the tower cranes are not the death traps of my layman’s imagination. When following proper protocol, they are actually quite safe.

As could be expected, slinging steel beams requires a great deal of trust between the operator and those workers in a more gravitationally disadvantaged position. Heitz said he has to have as much faith in the laborers, carpenters and iron workers below as they have in him.

It’s good that there are brave men and women willing to scale great heights to build our country’s infrastructure. They should just feel blessed that they’ll never know the true fear of writers block. Thanks to Mike O’Shea, I was able to avoid it this month.

If you have any land-based adventures I might tackle, send me an email. I just might take you up on it.

Contact Dan Naumovich with any of life’s adventures you think he should try (that don’t require the approval of the legal or human resources departments) at dan@naumo.com.